The present invention relates to performance management of a broadband network or more specifically to performance management of a xDSL network.
When providing broadband services through a broadband network, the flow or speed of data through the network is very important. Customers expect a certain level of service from their provider in that customers expect a certain speed or flow of data when accessing content (e.g., the public Internet) over the broadband network.
The broadband network may include a shared network that is accessed by many different customers. Additionally, the broadband network may include single or dedicated customer home networks for one customer or a group of customers. Currently, the flow of data through the shared network is collected to an inventory database on a nightly basis. The flow of data through the customer home network, however, is not collected and/or cannot be collected.
Collecting nightly snapshots of data from the shared network does not guarantee that service levels are continuously being met throughout the network and throughout the day. Problems that have the potential to turn into alarms or failures in the network may be only modestly predicted before they turn into failures, because the predictions are based only on nightly snapshots of network data flow. Moreover, the flow of data through customer home network is not collected or available at all. Thus, the end-to-end service to an individual customer or group of customers is not assured.